Vapourware LOL ELECTRONIC ARTS: The EA Thread

[Dexter]

http://www.benchmarkreporter.com/ncaa-video-game-lawsuit-gets-plaintiffs-60-million/6892/

 

[mindx2]

http://www.benchmarkreporter.com/ncaa-video-game-lawsuit-gets-plaintiffs-60-million/6892/

So plaintiffs get a few thousand and the lawyers get millions......!! Class-action lawyers are today's ambulance chasers. Shakespeare was right....

 

[Night Goat]

It's also very clear who was actually responsible for AC as a lead because the series took a nosedive once Desilets left. Not that it was A-grade material to begin with, but it lost that certain something.

is he standing in front of the internet

 

[Redlands]

It's also very clear who was actually responsible for AC as a lead because the series took a nosedive once Desilets left. Not that it was A-grade material to begin with, but it lost that certain something.

is he standing in front of the internet

Don't be silly, this is the internet:

 

[Bumvelcrow]

is he standing in front of the internet

He's just very small:

The Bees!

 

[Krraloth]

Don't be silly, this is the internet:

[/QUOTE]

I don't get it, what is that?

 

[Luka-boy]

I don't get it, what is that?

 

[Drax]

I don't get it, what is that?

Loved that show.

...And we get NINE seasons of TBBT...

 

[Astral Rag]

EA exec says complaints about “on-disc DLC” are “nonsense”
Moore says players have mistaken ideas about how games are developed and released.
By Kyle Orland (US) - Aug 14, 2015 9:25am CEST


Every few months, it seems, certain gamers get up in arms when it's discovered that a brand new game disc contains content that is to be sold in the future as "downloadable content." In a new interview, EA Chief Operating Officer Peter Moore said this kind of controversy comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that DLC is made.

"A lot of that resistance comes from the erroneous belief that somehow companies will ship a game incomplete, and then try to sell you stuff they have already made and held back," Moore told Gamespot in a Gamescom interview. "Nonsense. You come and stand where I am, next to Visceral's studio, and you see the work that is being done right now. And it's not just DLC, this is free updates and ongoing balance changes."

Moore compared the bits of DLC that are found on some game discs to scaffolding put in place to support the actual downloadable product when it's ready. "Think of them as APIs," he said. "Knowing down the road that something needs to sit on what you've already made, means you have to put some foundations down. What people are confused about is they think DLC is secretly on the disc, and that it's somehow unlocked when we say."

In practice, it doesn't really matter where the bits of "downloadable" content are stored; the value proposition for the core game doesn't change just because some "DLC" is actually part of the disc you originally bought. Those who argue that launch-day DLC shouldn't divert development resources before the core game is finished misunderstand how modern AAA game design works, with lots of moving parts being worked on in parallel by various autonomous teams (and without the ability to necessarily speed things up by simply throwing more people at the "core" product).

In any case, Moore stressed to Gamespot that DLC and season passes were a key element of keeping players continually engaged (and spending money) on the smaller number of games released these days. "Eight years ago when I joined EA, we were publishing 70 games a year. 70. And this year we might do twelve," he said. "The big games drive so much engagement nowadays, because they are not games you play for a while and then walk away from. Triple-A games today have live elements to them, and things like season passes are a way of keeping people engaged. Today we've got what used to be the size of a whole game development team, of about 40 or 50 people, working solely on the extra content."

 

[racofer]

Jewspeak 101.

 

[Chamezero]

"I'm not jewing you because I decided to jew you before I started production!" - AAA Devs turd logic

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Engagment (and spending money) intensifies.

"Eight years ago when I joined EA, we were publishing 70 games a year. 70. And this year we might do twelve," he said

They've probably included Sims addons in it.

 

[LESS T_T]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/are-ea-maki...-featuring-bethesda-ubisoft-activision-titles

Are EA making Netflix for games? Fan survey hints at 'all you can eat' service featuring Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision titles

"Why doesn't someone just make Netflix for games?" I asked in the office the other day, balking at the prospect of paying £30 for an entertainment product literally hundreds of talented people spent years making that would provide me tens of hours of enjoyment. "Someone probably already is," came the withering reply from outside my cage. That someone, a recent survey indicates, might be mega-publisher EA.

The survey, distributed to PC gamers by Chadwick Martin Bailey on behalf of EA, focuses on the idea of an "All You Can Play Video Game Subscription On PC," and includes a list of games from big (non-platform holder) triple-A publishers: EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Bethesda. They're big games, too. Dragon Age: Inquisition, The Evil Within, Assassin's Creed Unity, Civilization 5 are all name-checked.

Among the topics covered by the survey are multiple potential price points, for example $8.99/month and $14.99/month. The former includes titles from more publishers, but not until 3 months after their initial release, whereas the latter includes games from just EA and Take-Two (including GTA V), available immediately at launch. There are also pricing models for libraries with other publishers, exclusivity periods, etc.

There are also questions regarding the inclusion of indie titles, expansion packs, and discounts on digital editions.

We've reached out to EA for further comment, and will update you when we hear more from them.

I can't wait to play Ubisoft's Baldur's Gate on Origin.

 

[Night Goat]

Chadwick Martin Bailey

Holy fuck, that's a WASPy name. One of your friends, LundB?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Kotaku doing some "investigative reporting":

I’ve spent the past few hours digging into these documents, and although there isn’t too much interesting stuff in there that we haven’t already heard, there are some fascinating details about the conditions Electronic Arts set when agreeing to co-publish 38 Studios’ first and only game, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Turns out 38 Studios would have received a $1 million bonus if they’d hit an 85 on Metacritic, among other conditions. Gross. (The game got an 81.)

https://archive.is/bIZOI

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Kotaku doing some "investigative reporting":



https://archive.is/bIZOI

I'm still baffled how people agree to metacritic-rating bonus when EA can easily torpedo the score with one or two of their paid shills.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I'm still baffled how people agree to metacritic-rating bonus when EA can easily torpedo the score with one or two of their paid shills.

Which would only make sense for them after the initial sales of the game hint it to be a turd, since Metacritic scores above 85 (used?) to influence sales positively. Those Metacritic clauses were probably a fad back then, some corporate drone thoght it would be a good idea and then rampant copy and paste got it into most contracts. Is Metacritic still a thing? I think after Steam ratings, you began to read less and less about it.

 

[pippin]

Gross.

Too bad they weren't there when Bethesda fucked Obsidian.

 

[Average Manatee]

A $1 million payout sounds like a complete pittance. The game took like $100 million to make.

 

[Angthoron]

Devs probably get bonuses based on retweets now.

 

[Andhaira]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/are-ea-maki...-featuring-bethesda-ubisoft-activision-titles

I can't wait to play Ubisoft's Baldur's Gate on Origin.

Gabe probably had a minor heart attack hearing about this, and why he didn't think it first.

 

[pippin]

Apparently that Baldur's Gate is Dark Alliance, the hack and slash game.
A game which didn't had a PC port.

 

[Jaesun]

Dark Alliance was kinda fun actually, in a mindless hack and slash kind of way.

 

[Ninjerk]

Dark Alliance was kinda fun actually, in a mindless hack and slash kind of way.

Not to mention it inspired a Fallout sequel.

 

[Infinitron]

EA confirms a certain observation of mine, that they've avoided making open world games: www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/15/ea-building-lots-of-new-ips-and-gigantic-action-games

EA BUILDING 'LOTS OF NEW IPS' AND 'GIGANTIC ACTION GAMES'

Electronic Arts is "building a lot of new IPs" around the world, according to Patrick Soderlund, Executive Vice President of EA Studios, and one of them at Jade Raymond’s Motive studio in Montreal is filling an important gap in EA’s development portfolio.

"If you look at the biggest segment in our industry, which is action, we don't have a lot," Soderlund told IGN. "EA is not known to make gigantic action games like Assassin's Creed or Batman or GTA or those types of games that are really big. The strategic direction that we put in motion is to expand our portfolio more into that segment, to see what can we bring to gamers that maybe hasn't been done before."

The common thread among those franchises, of course, is that they’re open world games. I asked Soderlund if he was speaking specifically about Motive making a game at that scale.

"Maybe," he said. "I’m not suggesting we're going to go after GTA and sell 50 million units. We would love to! But what I'm saying is those types of absolutely AAA, big productions is what we want to do. And I think for us to do that, we need the right people."

To accomplish this, Soderlund explained, "you need a leadership and people that have done this in the best and they've done it successfully in the past. That, coupled with a large ambition to invest in new IP. We want to. We're building a lot of new IPs today but we want to invest more money into new IP."

Motive’s first project is assisting on Visceral’s unannounced Star Wars project, led by ex-Naughty Dog director Amy Hennig. Motive is also working on something new for EA that fits the big-budget action bill Soderlund is talking about.

"[Jade Raymond] wanted to try something different," Soderlund said. "She wanted to build action games and we were going in that direction…. It kind of came together, and that's why we did it."